Don Johnson’s life was once a non-stop party, yet he lived to tell the tale.
Can the Cold in July star survive his daughter’s role in Fifty Shades of
Grey?

We are in what Don Johnson calls his music room: grand piano, several guitars, pale-blue velvet armchairs and a view of a pale-blue Pacific Ocean. His house is large, airy and tasteful. He lives there with his wife, Kelley, who is impressively tall with long dark hair, whom he calls Miss Kelley (she calls him DJ) and their three children, Grace, 14, Jasper, 12, and Deacon, eight.

Johnson is relaxed in tracksuit bottoms and blue T-shirt. His face chiselled, his eyes searching, he is incredibly handsome and could pass for 15 years younger than his 64. I have just seen him in his new film, the low-budget noir Cold in July, where he looks very different. As a Texan private eye/pig farmer wearing an embroidered cowboy shirt and white boots, he gives a great performance.

Johnson seems to have had several different careers. There’s the one that everyone knows best – rolled-up-sleeved Versace jackets, espadrilles no socks, as Sonny Crockett in the Eighties television detective series Miami Vice. But there’s also a musical career – recording with Barbra Streisand and on stage in Guys and Dolls – and a rediscovery by Quentin Tarantino who cast him as plantation owner Big Daddy Bennett inDjango Unchained.

There have been stages of fame and super fame, a decade of being an icon. “There was a whole 15 years before that,” he corrects me, with a laugh. “For me it’s all been the same.”

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He studied acting on a scholarship at the University of Kansas. “People could look at some of the work I’ve done and say I’ve taken a non-traditional path, people in the world that like to compartmentalise. And this recent ­rediscovery of my particular gift is just that, a rediscovery. It’s rewarding and I’m grateful to still be in the conversation, to still be able to find joy and enthusiasm in that, and relevance.

“When you’re first starting out you’re ambitious, you’re like my seven-month-old puppy. You’re figuring it out and looking around and your ambition and ego drives the bus for a long time. And when you’ve been doing it for a while and get over the terror of whether you’re ever going to do it again you can relax into it and accept, ‘OK there’s something bigger and greater than me.’ ”

At the height of his Miami Vice fame Johnson was, in his words, “the sex idol of the universe”; he was even invited to the White House by the Reagans, who reportedly wanted his help with drug policy. He also struck gold with the cowboy cop show Nash Bridges, which made him tens of millions after he sued for a share of the profits. Before Cold in July some people said his role in Django Unchained was a comeback. Johnson is too cool for that; he doesn’t feel he’s ever been away. He just makes different choices. He also had a hit earlier this year with the Cameron Diaz comedy The Other Woman.

“You get to the end of the year and you see those films that are tent-pole extravaganzas, massive budgets, massive promotion and massive marketing budgets,” he says. “But the films that win the awards are the low-budget ones like Cold in July. They are about great storytelling.”

He believes there’s a big chasm in film making these days. There’s high-budget and no-budget – middle-budget movies have gone.

“It’s reflecting the American economy. There’s no middle class, there’s only rich and poor. Art imitating life. In some ways it’s very disturbing because common sense tells you if you don’t have a middle class you don’t have consumers.

“But back to the movie business. I would like to see more attention paid to quality film making because these tent-pole pictures are all the same. And what separates them is the difference in special effects, not storytelling. It’s a dumbing down of culture.”

When I tell him I loved his Cold in July costume, the very distinctive fringed shirts which made the character impossibly cool, he tells me: “I had a dream about those outfits. I was doing preparation for the part. Generally I only work from the script unless it’s a historical piece or a biography that I’m doing. I prepare in a variety of different ways. I do ritual, I do dreamwork and the normal stuff actors do.”

Dreamwork, ritual? “Well it’s easier to say it than explain it. The subconscious doesn’t lie, it has no filters, [so] I ask a question, sometimes I write it out, to my inner self, and I get a dream that will answer it. Even though it might seem it has nothing to do with it, it has everything to do with it.

“I didn’t dream specifically of the shirts but I got directional images of what [the character] should be like and I brought them right here in Santa Barbara. With jeans and boots I stepped into him.”

Johnson grew up on a farm in Missouri, so the farming part didn’t need any research. More recently, until about eight years ago, he had a ranch in Aspen. Was the farming in the film second nature? “It was first nature,” he replies.

And there are other things that have become instinctive to him. “When you’ve been around as long as I have you start looking at the things that serve you and the things that don’t. The things that didn’t serve me I eliminated. Forgiveness is a good thing. I started with myself, forgiving myself. If you want to make a change in the world, generally the best way to initiate that change is starting with yourself.”

Don Johnson with his ex wife Melanie Griffith, in 1973 (REX)

Johnson has a fair amount to forgive himself for. Aged 12 he was sent to reform school for stealing a car, and in the Eighties, when he was the highest-paid man on television, he once described a typical day as including, “a case of beer, a few martinis, several bottles of the best wine and some good Napoleon brandy after dinner”. He was known for his wild ways.

“I don’t know about that,” he says. “Could be a lot of people categorising me and perhaps it served the ambition and the ego for a period of time. Perhaps it was the characters I played and who is to say whether art followed life or life followed art? None of us knows that for sure.” What about when he was nicknamed Don Juanson because of his reputation? “Well, that just seems silly, doesn’t it?” he grins.

Silly or not Johnson was never short of female company. He had a relationship with Patti D’Arbanville (immortalised by Cat Stevens in the song Lady D’Arbanville) and they had a son, actor and musician Jesse Johnson, who is upstairs working on artwork for his new album.

He married Melanie Griffith twice. They met when she was 15 and became engaged on her 18th birthday. They married in January 1976 and divorced later that year. They reunited in 1989, had a daughter, Dakota, and divorced again in 1996.

Everybody must ask why he married Griffith a second time. “I forgot,” he says and laughs really heartily, and assures me they have always remained friends. In the week we meet, it had been reported that Griffith was separating from Antonio Banderas; does Johnson hope they’ll reunite? “It would be inappropriate for me to comment.”

But why did he go back? “It was simply a matter of two old souls connecting so that Dakota could be born.” He is extremely close to Dakota, who is an actress. Is it true he has promised her he will never see the film of EL James’s steamy novel, Fifty Shades of Grey, in which she plays the lead? “That’s correct. It’s not something I would go to anyway. If you’ve read The Story of O, which I did in the Sixties, you pretty much get it.”

Isn’t it because it’s embarrassing for her to have her father watch her in sexually compromised positions? “I don’t know whether it is or not. This is the family business, we portray characters and this is the character that Dakota is portraying. It’s difficult for people to separate who we are from the characters we portray, but not for me.”

It’s an interesting breakout role in one of the most notorious and successful novels of the decade. Could be a great one. “History will tell us about that. I probably will not see it just because it’s not a movie I would see. I’ve never seen The Vampire Diaries, I’ve never seen Twilight. It’s in a category of films that I just wouldn’t be interested in.

“They are not the kind of books on my nightstand. I’m reading one called The Sons of Sinbad, which sounds a salacious title, but it’s really a droll history about the independence of Arabia. I’m thinking of directing something based on it. I’m also forcing myself to read something called The Goldfinch [by Donna Tartt] because everyone is recommending it.

“I don’t read many novels. When you are in the business of doing scripted material you look at it differently. It’s less entertaining and more like work. My wife loves novels and scripted things. If I put a documentary on she goes, ‘Oh my God, borefest.’ ”

He met Kelley 16 years ago in San Francisco. “I was invited to the mayor Willie Brown’s birthday party. I walked in and she was there. It was love at first sight. There was a statuesque brunette who was clearly a woman of substance so I made it my business to meet her, then I basically interviewed her.”

Interviewed her? “Yes. I interviewed her to find out who she was and having been interviewed by professionals I knew all the right questions to ask so when I finished interviewing her I told her, ‘Listen. I have to be up early in the morning to shoot so I have to leave now, but I’m going to marry you.’ She said, ‘Are you crazy?’ I said, ‘A little bit, but it hasn’t seemed to interfere with my actual functioning.’ ”

Was he sober when he said this? “Relatively. Like I said, it was a rare moment of clarity.” These days he is teetotal and doesn’t smoke except for the vapour cigarette that’s in his hand. “She didn’t speak to me for a year but within about two-and-a-half years we were married. I think I had scared her when I told her I was going to marry her as she was with someone else at the time. A small detail but I had to disavow her of that notion.”

In between the two relationships with Griffith he was briefly close to Barbra Streisand. “I found her fascinating,” he says. “A profoundly interesting and funny woman. She opened my eyes to a lot of things I hadn’t even considered. We’re still close. We don’t see each other much but when we do it’s like that.” He snaps his fingers. ‘Like a minute hasn’t passed.” Was he ever going to marry her? “No. My complications and her complications were not going to fit.”

Don Johnson with his daughter Dakota, star of Fifty Shades of Grey (REX)

From the outside it appears Johnson’s life has been an emotional rollercoaster. But meeting him, you have the sense that he has taken everything in his stride. It’s been more than a decade since he had that clear-out in his life and got rid of whatever didn’t “serve” him. What makes him happy? “I find happiness in the littlest of things, the simplest of things. There’s a quote from Nietzsche which goes something like this: Happiness is the least of things, the lightest thing, a breath, a lizard’s rustle, an iris. Little maketh the best happiness. Be still.” One could say conversely it’s the small things that send one into despair. “I don’t see it that way. That way leads to fear, resentment and anger.”

What is he afraid of? “Nothing. It goes back to what we were talking about before, when I got rid of things that didn’t serve me. Fear didn’t serve me.”

So he’s not even afraid of death? “Particularly death. That’s the original fear, the original sin.” At this point his phone rings; it plays Row, Row, Row Your Boat on a bugle. I ask about his time in London, playing Nathan Detroit in the West End production of Guys and Dolls. When his casting was announced people were surprised, to say the least. “I had to fit into a company that was already established,” he says. “This guy from ‘Hollywood’ coming over to take over the part. Everybody was sceptical and I was, ‘What the hell was I thinking?’ Ultimately it was just about putting your nose to the grindstone and knocking off the rust. Every night I was more than a little bit nervous. I didn’t want to mess it up for anyone else. In the end it worked out well and I got great reviews.”

The phone rings again and it’s Dakota. She’s on FaceTime and suddenly she joins the interview. “Doesn’t she look beautiful?” he says. “Doesn’t she look like a movie star? How did this happen?” They chat about family stuff. He asks again, “Doesn’t she look beautiful?” Yes, I say.

He’s close to all of his children and he’s close to his father who was a farmer and also worked in the aircraft industry. “He is still alive, a master mechanic and carpenter. He taught me incredible things. I can work with wood. I can tear down an engine and put it together. I know what makes it work. My dad can still do that. He lives on the farm in Missouri that I was born on. I talk to him every day. He lives in the country, 84-years-old, by himself. He built a huge workshop there where he makes wooden objects which he sells to the locals and is in huge demand. He is fending off three women right now. My mum passed when I was 25 and they had been apart for 12 years before that. My mum was a great woman. I was more like my mother earlier in life, now I’m like my dad.”

He takes a drag on his vapour cigarette. He gave up the real ones 15 years ago. “It’s truly liberating not to be tied to them. Drinking too, it just doesn’t serve me. When you’re a kid you don’t drink. I started drinking so I could fit in as an adult and then you come to your senses.”

What are his vices today? “I don’t have any vices except my children,” he smiles beatifically.